Reading Refletion No 3

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

1.    The general themes in this book include understanding human decision-making and the systems of thinking related to them. I would say the main argument of this book is on the rational-agent model. Instead of supporting it, Kahneman believed that we do use reason in decision making but another quick and easier to obtain thoughts form and is highly prone to error.  

2.    In my opinion, the book connected with and enhanced what we are learning In ENT3003 regarding consumer’s purchase behavior. In certain purchases, they are quicker and require less effort. Even though consumers may purchase that item, later they may see their reasoning was wrong. I believe this type of behavior and decision making is very common in shopping for apparel. 

3.    The exercise I would design for this class based on this book is have a slideshow with parts of a picture. The student would look at each picture and say what they automatically thought about it. After they finish the slideshow they would see thoroughly which picture was right and compare it to their original answer to see if they were accurate the first time. The purpose of this exercise is to show how fast they made their decision and how it did not necessarily take time for them to get to that answer. 

4.    My biggest surprise or ‘aha’ moment when reading the book was how young his discovery was and how it is implemented in my previous coursework. For example, in my psychology class, we learned about Kahneman but it felt like it was discovered years before I was born. It was crazy to me how he wrote this book only 6 years ago. It just proved that science is always changing and improving as we become more aware and discover more about the human race.